Why Teachers Quit: A New Study

New research from the Alliance for Excellent Education on the teaching profession has recently come out. Pretty much says the same stuff that every survey or analysis of the teaching profession says, namely teachers quit for one of three reasons: low Pay, lack of collaboration, lack of administrative support. One interesting conclusion does jump-out:

“Since the mid-1980s the significant expansion of the teaching workforce has been accompanied by increased turnover among beginning teachers.”

This implies a revolving-door for the teaching profession: more first-year teachers come in, teach for a couple-years, leave, only to be replaced by more first-year teaches. While this may come as a shock, it simply mimics economic conditions: a decline of middle-class professions (of which teaching is rapidly becoming neither) and an emphasis on short-term gains at the expense of long-term investment.

I was fortunate that I had a solid first-three years with some great mentors. However, the fault-lines of a decade of teaching are getting wider and wider each year with no end in sight.